The biggest mistake they made was ordering 3,000 decanters and 1,500 aerators. These were not custom products so why was the order quantity so high? As an importer it's clear that the agent they dealt with in China knew it was a one-time thing and juiced them on the quantity. Realistically they should've ordered 100 of each as a quality check, listed them for sale, and seen how it goes. Minimum order quantities rarely are.
Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon
31–40 of 94 posts
Re: Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon
#32This is the flip side of an experience that's more and more common when buying on Amazon--there are a lot of sellers peddling poorly made or counterfeit items for a quick buck. It's a crowded marketplace, and it's mostly crowded with sketchy sellers. I avoid Amazon for anything other than books, lately. For anything else, there's no telling what you'll actually get.
Yep I've found this too. That said, Amazon returns service is actually pretty decent one the few times I've had reason to use it. I've never even had to send the items back - they just refund it and suggest ordering again if I want to.
Not sure if they'd do that for like a TV or something, but certainly anything under about £50 is an immediate refund with no-questions-asked it seems.
Re: Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was always told to follow the rule that if you think of something that will make a ton of money, do some research, because someone has probably already thought of it and done it. If no one has, then your idea is probably flawed. It's the really small percentage of ideas that fit into neither category where you can make a lot of money, but that is incredibly small. Understand your probably of success before you star…
Two economists walking down a street. One spots a $100 bill and says "Look, a $100 bill!" The other says, "Probably fake. If it was real, someone would have grabbed it already..."
Don't substitute a meme for thinking. The real story is as follows:
Two economists are sitting at home. One says "Lets go out and look for $100 bills in the street." The other says "There are better ways to make money."
Re: Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon
#34I don't know why people still believe that someone with a winning (money making) system is going to share that with others. If a system works that well, nobody is going to sell instructions on how to do it. Maybe they'll share the knowledge with a few friends or family, but they sure won't sell it.
To sell "how to get rich" information clearly implies that the seller is not getting rich. If they were, and even if they were exceptionally generous and wanted to share the knowledge, they wouldn't bother charging money for it.
Re: Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon
#35But really, is this any different than these "coding academies" where you pay $10k to "learn to be a programmer in 30 days and get a great job making $100k+ a year"?
Which academy makes the specific promises and claims that you just asserted?
Some of the bootcamps report much more modest salaries ($50k-$70k) to https://cirr.org/data
Re: Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon
#36Similar to the Reply All #117 episode [1] on the "free watch" and the drop shipping business, and what they discovered about all the courses people were selling on how to do it. [1] https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/117-the-worlds-most-ex...
I've seen those free watch offers and always been intrigued - I assumed it was some kind of data-gathering exercise that would open the spam floodgates for the customer. Thanks for the link, I'll give this a listen as it seems there might be more to it than I'd first assumed.
Re: Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon
#37I don't know why people still believe that someone with a winning (money making) system is going to share that with others. If a system works that well, nobody is going to sell instructions on how to do it. Maybe they'll share the knowledge with a few friends or family, but they sure won't sell it. To sell "how to get rich" information clearly implies that the seller is not getting rich. If they were, and even if the…
There is the concept of franchises like McDonalds which seems to go against your point.
Re: Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon
#38In this day and age it is surprising that people still fall for "Get Rich Schemes". Anyone selling Investment Advice, Business Advice, Products, etc that promise success, wealth, etc are charlatans. These two took advantage of desperate people. There is little to no money to be made on AMZN today. No one is getting rich anymore.
If you treat it like what it is--a business requiring market research, advertisement, and offering products of a quality commensurate with the price--it is possible to run a profitable business on Amazon.
Re: Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon
#39> They’re frustrated with Amazon, which they say is making money off the failures of people like them. Wait what... I can't even. It's not Amazon's fault you bought something no one wanted then tried to sell it. You wanted easy money and it doesn't exist. You CHOSE to ship directly to Amazon so you didn't have to handle shipping, you CHOSE a quality item that kept breaking, they CHOSE to use Amazon, any they CHOSE to…
I think the source is zero sum thinking and shallowness of thought. Amazon is profitable while they are not therefore it is Amazon stealing from them. There is a logic there that could be circumstantially correct but is loaded with fallacies and self-serving thinking.
Naive economic intuition has proven shockingly bad - especially historically. It is one thing not to grok rate of returns or market direction or make poor investments. Those people would be geniuses compared to historic economic fallacies.
We are talking things like the Ancient greeks thinking wealth could only be earned by conquest (logically implying that someone who conquered the entire world and enslaved it would be very rich but would not grow wealthier) and medieval thinking that merchants had to be frauds to sustain themselves given that goods had a value the same everywhere - despite the fact travel was known to be slow risky and expensive meaning just being a transporter is clearly an honest service even with the fallacious universal value assumption. Even if you are a lord who can afford something you may not have the time to travel to exotic locales to buy it directly from the source.
Re: Peddling the ‘Secrets’ to Getting Rich on Amazon
#40But really, is this any different than these "coding academies" where you pay $10k to "learn to be a programmer in 30 days and get a great job making $100k+ a year"?
I'd argue that coding is more of a skill that people need help starting with, and some hands-on help in the classroom when it comes to issues etc. Books etc are great, but two main issues: if you get stuck it can really help to have a teacher etc to get you back on track, and most importantly (IMO) is you likely need guidance on what to learn and when (i.e. don't attempt to read knuth cover-to-cover before you've even learnt what a while-loop is yet - there are perhaps too many books to chose from unless you have someone with some experience to point you in the right direction).
Just even the "how the hell do I get started?!" question (put yourself in the shoes of an absolute newbie with a blank computer - how do you even start programming? Like do you write stuff in MS Word and Save As 'myapp.exe'? Someone entirely new wont know without help) is helped by a classroom situation.
Selling stuff on amazon is pretty simple by comparison. Sign up, buy and ship some stuff to their warehouse, click a few buttons to create a listing, then wait for sales. I could 100% imagine my mum working this out on her own, but I see zero-chance of her managing to write "hello world" in javascript on her own without considerable coaching and help.